Not everyone who wants to be mayor gets to be mayor. There are even some likely candidates who want no part of the gig.
A few years back, after one of my KDHX radio broadcasts, the why-haven’t-you-ever-run-for-mayor question was asked, off mic, to a guest who had a solid mix of business, civic, and political experience.
The reply came quick, in the form of a rhetorical question: “Why would I want a bullshit job in a f—d up city?"
The clinical translation: The mayor of St. Louis City doesn’t have a lot of power and must face a litany of world-class urban pathologies every day. No thank you.
Still, the line is forming outside Room 200 in a City Hall that has housed city government since 1898. Four-term Mayor Francis Slay leaves in the spring. Seven candidates have filed for mayor thus far: Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, City Treasurer Tishaura Jones, Ald. Lyda Krewson, Ald. Antonio French, Ald. Jeffrey Boyd, Bill Haas, and Jimmie Matthews.
Police Chief Sam Dotson announced and then withdrew. Collector of Revenue Greg F.X. Daly flirted with the idea and decided against it. State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed might enter the race.
Kacey Cordes Mahrt, a vice president at US Bancorp Community Development Corporation, is rumored to be a possible wild card entry either in the March primary or as an independent in the April general election. (She did not return phone calls on the matter.) Mahrt is the daughter of Dan Cordes, an executive with Express Scripts and the CEO of Foundry St. Louis, which recently offered to pay up to $80 million toward the "public portion" of a proposed Major League Soccer stadium. During a Creative Stickup podcast in October, Cordes Mahrt discussed affordable housing and urban issues, areas in which she works through community development. When asked about St. Louis' current political leadership, she described it as “milquetoast.”
All of this interest in the mayoral opening occurs when, depending on whom you ask, the city’s glass is half full, half empty, overflowing, or has fallen off the table and shattered.
Some of the arithmetic is simple, and brutal. According to the latest census estimate, there are more people in St. Charles County (385,590) than in St. Louis City (315,685). The city represents 11 percent of the region’s population of 2.8 million, putting it among the lowest proportions for central cities in the nation’s metro areas. The city is 61 square miles. St. Louis County covers 524 square miles and has more than 1 million residents. The county executive has his own limits because only one-third of the county’s population lives in unincorporated areas, where the county executive has direct jurisdictional control.
In that sociopolitical mix, does it matter who becomes the next mayor of the city?
In both symbolic and real ways, it does, says Todd Swanstrom, a professor of community collaboration and public policy at the University of Missouri–St. Louis: “You identify with the core of the region because it is at least the repository of our history. There is an emotional attachment to the central city. Stan Musial played on these grounds. The Camp Jackson battle during the Civil War was fought near SLU. The Dred Scott case was argued at the Old Courthouse. There is a sentimental attachment to that.”
Swanstrom is impressed with recent investment and revitalization in technology, medical services, and biotech in the central corridor; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's $1.75 billion planned project in north city; the proposed City Foundry project in midtown; and the revival of the Arch grounds.
“I am amazed," he says. "Something’s in the air. Maybe the bubble will burst, maybe people are over-investing, but they’re building things.”
Ken Warren, professor of political science at Saint Louis University, isn’t as upbeat.
“The mayor of St. Louis was a much bigger deal back in the old days, when the city was a major player,” he says, adding that the city’s “weak mayor” form of government adds to the problem. “Not only can the mayor not lead the city very effectively, but certainly not the region. When push comes to shove, what leaders are going to yield to Slay when they want to go in a different direction? Slay would like to think he is a lot more powerful and influential in the St. Louis region than he actually is.”
Warren looks at the city's historic arc and sees little reason for optimism. “The single worst problem is St. Louis’ image problem. St. Louis is simply seen, especially by outsiders, as a dying city,” he says. “The city has lost its most affluent residents, with them mostly migrating to the county, Jefferson County, and St. Charles. St. Louis is a mess: poor schools, poor leadership, about the nation’s highest murder rate, drug dealing out of control, terrible inner-city poverty, fleeing citizens and businesses...” Warren says. “Are these problems too difficult to overcome? Maybe.”
Lana Stein, author of St. Louis Politics: The Triumph of Tradition, thinks addressing the problems of North St. Louis should be a priority, so its residents “can have a safer life and the ability to make a living.” A new mayor might need to “reach across jurisdictions to create new entities to address public safety and other areas," she says.
“It’s always important who is mayor,” adds Stein, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. “Who is mayor is perhaps even more important now. With Trump as president, it may be harder to get the wherewithal to address poverty, unemployment, homelessness. We need someone who can really get along with others and find opportunities that may not be obvious.”
Swanstrom sees reworking the city’s incentive system as a primary issue. “The idea that every single person who does real estate gets a tax abatement needs to be rethought,” Swanstrom says. “It is fiscally unsustainable to simply abate every single development when the city desperately needs revenue. Unfortunately, there is a tendency for politicians to take credit for autonomous investment trends by attaching a subsidy to them and then claiming credit for it. That’s classic political behavior. Hopefully, the next mayor can get beyond that.”
A continuing need for revenue will be city government’s increasing need to finance pension programs. Slay reworked some of those commitments in firefighter pensions, but that is predicted to be an ongoing problem.
One area of common academic agreement is that the vitality of the central corridor needs to become contagious. “Downtown is just one end of the central corridor—it’s not the heart of the region,” says Swanstrom. “The next mayor needs to find out how to spread the prosperity of the central corridor through the rest of the city, how to spread it south and especially have a strategy to build on that strength north across Delmar and cross that Maginot Line and break that imaginary boundary. It’s all in people’s heads."
Stein also sees north city as the most critical challenge for the new mayor. “The policies coming out of Jeff City and D.C. may present formidable handicaps," she says, "but we need to bear in mind that house by house, block by block, you can remake the urban landscape.”
Overall, city governmental services need attention, too. “There is administrative fat in city government,” says Swanstrom. “The whole bureaucracy needs to be shaken; everyone needs to be shaken down to their boots and a little bit of the fear of the Lord put into them. There are so many entrenched people in there just filling out forms.”
Warren is tired of waiting for a turnaround, again pointing to the constrictions of the mayor's role. “I have lived here since 1974 and mayor after mayor has promised to reverse its declining population and business losses, but no mayor has been successful in doing so,” he says. “The city’s problems are so severe that we need a mayor with enormous powers to allow him or her to take bold steps to revitalize the city. A St. Louis mayor simply cannot do this if his or her power is so compromised by a governing structure that dilutes power and encourages divisions.”
Stein’s work tracing back the political history of St. Louis takes the long view: “St. Louis is a combination of hope and of fear, of rebirth and of the opposite. We must work together, and we must form new structures with the county. We need someone who is not tied to the way it’s always been.”
Wherever growth occurs in the metro area, the central city remains the focus of much of the region's cultural and social activity. As former mayoral chief of staff Jeff Rainford has said, the next time the Cardinals win the World Series, the parade won’t be in St. Charles.
No matter who moves into Room 200, Swanstrom has some basic advice: “The next mayor better hire some smart people.”
